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Tag Archives: NFL

Hope everyone had a good Christmas. It is a busy time of year for sports, with the World Juniors, Winter Classic and Wild Card NFL playoffs. Here is a quick recap of the ratings over the past week.

TSN once again boasted about record ratings for a World Junior tournament taking place in Europe. For Canada’s four preliminary round games, an average of 1.4 million viewers watched. The game-by-game breakdown was: Canada vs. Czech Republic, 1.75 million; Canada vs. USA, 1.74 million; Canada-Slovakia, 1.2 million; Canada-Germany, 755 000. The Boxing Day game was audience almost doubled over last year. The Canada-USA game was the most viewed program in Canada on New Year’s Eve, while the game against the Czech Republic was the highest ever for a group stage game played in Europe.

Due to new tournament rules, the first place team in each group now has to play a quarterfinal, instead of receiving a bye into the semis. As a result TSN aired an extra Canada game, with 1.6 million viewers tuning into the quartefinal vs. Switzerland. In other quarterfinal action an average of 752 000 watched the host Swedes play Slovakia. Despite Canada not playing a very close game in a semifinal loss to Finland, an average of 2.7 million viewers tuned in. This set a record as the most watched World Junior game at any European-hosted tournament. However, with the Canada loss, the numbers for Sunday’s medal games tumbled. An average of 1 million watched the final between Sweden and Finland.

While all of TSN’s World Junior records were asterisked with “among European-hosted tournaments”, the 2014 Winter Classic from The Big House set a record on TV. It is not only the highest attended hockey game in history, but also the most watched regular season game in Canada on record. An average of 3.57 million watched CBC’s four-hour broadcast as the Leafs defeated the Red Wings in a shootout. That almost doubled the previous high for a Winter Classic, when Pittsburgh and Washington played each other on a Saturday night in 2011. The previous high for a regular season game in Canada was last January’s season opener between Toronto and Montreal. The audience peaked at 5.3 million during the shootout.

Lastly, here are the numbers for CTV’s coverage of the NFL Wild Card playoffs over the weekend. On Saturday 997 000 watched Kansas City-Indianapolis and 1.1 million watched New Orleans-Philadelphia. On Sunday 869 000 watched San Diego-Kansas City and 1.6 million watched San Francisco-Green Bay. The average of the four games was 1.1 million. Those ratings are down as a whole compared to last season, when the average was 1.2 million. The AFC games were both down compared to last year, while the NFC games were about even. For those wondering about a comparison of Sunday’s NFL games and November’s CFL Division Semis, the CFL beat the NFL averaging 1.5 million.

Also worth noting that the postgame SportsCentre that aired on TSN, remember CTV didn’t really have a postgame show, averaged around a million viewers from 11pm-midnight on TSN. That is almost better than Motive, which had 1.23 million viewers on CTV.

HNIC ratings have evened out after their above-average start. The Winnipeg-Ottawa game was down close to half a million viewers compared to their encounter on opening day. Toronto-Montreal was down almost a million. After a dip to under 2 million viewers on January 26, the Prime East game has now hit the 2 million mark three times in the first four weeks of the season. The Prime West game has also drawn at least a million viewers all but once.

But, as I said, audiences have leveled out. This year’s average Hockey Day ratings for the three games are even with last season’s numbers at 1.6 million. So, in English Canada at least, the post-lockout fad has gone back to the usual ratings. No word yet on how the rest of the CBC’s daylong celebration of hockey did.

Meanwhile a revitalized Canadiens team is great news for RDS in Quebec. Canadiens ratings are surging giving RDS multiple spots in the Quebec top 30 every week so far. Through February 6 (or 8 games), the Canadiens are averaging over 900, 000 viewers on RDS. Montreal’s numbers in Quebec (on RDS) are better than the Leafs in Ontario (on Sportsnet) so far. Of course Sportsnet has shown a very limited number of Leafs games so far.

Another year, another Super Bowl, another ridiculous amount of television coverage.

The Super Bowl Twister arrow has been spun around once again, and this year it lands on the blue circle of CBS, who today will provide coverage of Super Bowl XLVII (47), and will feature more coverage then ever, on and off the field. CTV and RDS will be provide English and French coverage respectively.

Here is a breakdown and timeline of today’s coverage from the plethora of networks covering the Harbowl™ from New Orleans. All times are Eastern.

Road to the Superbowl is NFL Films’ annual look back at the greatest sights and sounds of the 2012-13 NFL season. The one-hour special features the best of nearly 100 players and coaches wired for sound, focusing on the most exciting moments and the best teams on the journey to New Orleans.

12pm — CTV — Road to the Playoffs

An inside look at the past season and how each team made it to the playoffs.

1pm — CTV — Sportscentre’s Top 10 Super Bowl Moments

1:30pm — CTV — Top 50 NFL Plays of 2012-13

2pm — CBS / CTV — The Super Bowl Today

Originating live from three separate sites in New Orleans, CBS’ James Brown, Dan Marino, Boomer Esiason, Shannon Sharpe, and Bill Cowher, along with Greg Gumbel, anchor the pre-game show previewing all the football and excitement leading up to Super Bowl XLVII. NFL Insider Jason La Canfora, reporters Lesley Visser, Steve Tasker, and Solomon Wilcots, will also cover the pre-game activities. CBS Evening News host Scott Pelley will interview President Barack Obama at 4:30pm from the White House.

6pm — CBS / CTV / RDS — Super Bowl Kickoff Show

Alicia Keys sings the National Anthem as part of the pre-game festivities, and Jennifer Hudson sings American the Beautiful, joined by the Sandy Hook Elementary School chorus.

6:25pm — CBS / CTV / RDS — Super Bowl XLVII

Jim Nantz will call his third title game (2007 and 2010) while Sunday marks the seventh Super Bowl for Phil Simms, which ranks him behind only John Madden among Super Bowl television analysts. Steve Tasker (Niners) and Solomon Wilcotts (Ravens) will serve as sideline reporters.

Beyoncé performs during the Pepsi Super Bowl XLVII Halftime Show.

10pm — CBS Sports Network — Super Bowl Today Post-Game Show

CBS will air its first-ever extended post-game show. The show is scheduled to last an hour after the trophy presentation.

10pm — NFL Network — NFL Gameday Final

RADIO: The Super Bowl can be heard on TSN Radio in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg; and Team 1410 Vancouver and Team 1200 in Ottawa.

ONLINE: For the first time ever, Canadians can stream the game online and for free on CTV.ca

CBS’ COVERAGE: CBS will have 62 cameras for the game (they usually use between 9 and 12 for a regular season game) including aerial cameras, unmanned cameras and five high-speed cameras. The high-speed “Heyeper Zoom” cameras capture video at a frame rate of 300–500 frames per second. CBS will also introduce a brand-new graphics package.

COMMERCIALS: Chances are you know someone (read: wife, girlfriend, etc.) who only cares about the commercials. Depending on where you live in Canada, and how or from who you get your television stations, the US commercials — that are nearly an entity as big as the game itself — won’t be seen on Canadian screens due to sim-subbing. It’s an issue that comes up so much every February, the CRTC has a webpage explaining why you won’t see them on CBS. There will be plenty of sites on the Interweb where you can view the commercials though.

WINNER: I’m a Green Bay Packers fan, so obviously I’d prefer to see an NFC team win it. Also, if I have to see that idiot Ray Lewis do his stupid Elaine Benes-type dance again, I’ll stab myself in the eye with a cocktail fork. Who you got?

EDIT by Josh: Might as well add in my contrarian view. I’ve got the Ravens winning 24-23. I’m a big fan of Ray Rice and Ed Reed, so that’s what is behind my choice. Also there’s OJ Brigrance, who’s a great story and has a Canadian connection (he won a Grey Cup). Would be fitting for Kaepernick to get it done after an incredible year for rookie NFL quarterbacks though.

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This year marked the first in the NFL’s new initiative to play games on most Thursday nights during the regular season. NFL Network’s package expanded from 8 to 13. NBC added a Thanksgiving night game. Add in the season opener (which was actually on a Wednesday because of a political convention) and there was weekday football every week this season until now. There are no Thursday night games in weeks 16 or 17.

Many of the games, which air on league-owned NFL Network in the States, were duds. The best matchup was probably the very first when bitter rivals Chicago and Green Bay played in week 2. The Packers won 23-10, but the Bears turned out to have a good season as well. They are tied for the last NFC wildcard spot. Who knew on October 18 that the Seahawks and 49ers would play each other on national television again two months later? This week they play on Sunday Night Football. Aside from those two, there have been no Thursday Night games this year that featured teams that now have .500 or better records. Three times teams who both have sub-.500 records met.

Of course it isn’t entirely the NFL’s fault for poor scheduling. Who knew that Cam Newton would be so bad that he’d throw three picks and his Panthers would get destroyed by the defending Super Bowl champion Giants in week 3? Who knew that New Orleans would have a mediocre season, taking some of the buzz away from the NFL Network’s second most buzzworthy matchup against the Falcons? Who knew that the Eagles would completely collapse after September taking any buzz away from their matchup against the Bengals? All of those games looked like quality national television matchups in August. Even NBC got in on the underachieving party as the hapless Jets got blown out by New England on Thanksgiving.

It wasn’t all bad for the Thursday night experiment though. Many of the games early on were decided by less than a touchdown, although the same can’t be said for those in November and December. The Titans upsetting the Steelers in October was memorable. Other than that, and maybe the Bucs beating the Vikings, they’re weren’t any upsets all year in an NFL season filled with parity.

Personally I see no harm in having Thursday night games, even if the Browns played the Jaguars every week. They give fans a chance to see their favourite team on national TV one more time per year. Every team played once on Thursday this year (the Giants and Cowboys did twice including the Wednesday night opener). That seems fair to me.

Of course the NFL is mostly concerned with ratings. It seems that in America, the ratings are doing just fine. Despite carriage issues with NFL Network in some markets, Thursday Night Football won the night on cable every week. In Canada I only have ratings for November and December available to me now. It is worth noting that three of the four games in October aired on Sportsnet One due to the MLB playoffs, so this takes into account 7 of the 11 games that aired on the main Sportsnet channels. Those seven games averaged 336, 000 viewers. That’s not as impressive as the late Sunday games, which regularly bring in close to half a million for Citytv alone. It is also not as impressive as the Sunday or Monday nighters, which are averaging 533, 000 and 521, 000 viewers on TSN over the same time period. The highest rated Thursday game was 421, 000 for Miami @ Buffalo (only one other topped 400, 000 viewers). Those two games only beat one Monday night game and no Sunday night games since November 1.

Having said all that, Thursday night games still do better in the Canadian ratings than many scripted cable shows and every NBA regular season game. Especially considering the NHL lockout, they are valuable sports programming.

The three CFL games this week averaged 741, 000 viewers. That is fairly consistent with last week’s average.

With no baseball or hurricane competition, Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football were well up over last week. The average rating for the two games was up 37% over last week.

After a great start, Raptors ratings have fallen back to the usual. Even on Tuesday night with no competition from original programming (except on CBC), the game couldn’t muster 100, 000 viewers.

The CFL playoffs begin this weekend. Chris Cuthbert and Glen Suitor will call the East Semi Final between the Argonauts and Eskimos, while Rod Black and Duane Forde will call the West Semi Final as the Roughriders face the Stampeders. I think both games will see ratings increases over last season. Last year the CFL’s two smallest markets, Hamilton and Winnipeg, both made the playoffs at the expense of large markets in Toronto and Saskatchewan. With the Riders and Argos both playing on Sunday, it will only help ratings in English Canada. Since the Alouettes played in the East Semi last season, RDS will likely see a large drop off compared to last year.